Shortly before Christmas, the Business Secretary Vince Cable, promised to help British firms compete better against their continental rivals, by cutting European red tape.

The Government plans to stop the “gold-plating” of EU directives in cases where implementation goes beyond the minimum standard decreed. This new policy will take immediate effect.

In future, the text of European directives will be written directly into British law and will mean that the UK’s interpretation of the law is not unfairly restricting British businesses and limited company contractors. Additionally, every five years ministers will review the European directive legislation and will consult with businesses on the application of the rules.

The ARC has welcomed the coalition’s move, saying it will help businesses in the UK compete fairly. Chairman Adrian Marlowe said that nobody has asked for favours, but by helping Britain compete, the way is set for greater employment and prosperity.

Copying EU directives directly into law without adding interpretations makes sense and this should ease the problems of actually implementing the regulations. EU legislation is not subject to open debates unlike UK led regulations. Legislation, such as the AWR, will be able to pass straight into law without parliament voting on it.

Marlowe explained that the Agency Workers Directive contains “gold-plating” that is not essential under the EU directive and this has put both recruiters and employers at a disadvantage.

Marlowe also pointed out that the use of agreements between social partners causes concern. A few organisations get disproportionate authority and if this device continues to be used he urges Mr. Cable to make sure the entire process is open and transparent.

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People who have just become self-employed will have to wait up to 8 weeks for their registration to be processed says HMRC.

The Revenue has explained that it has had to redeploy tax officials to more high priority work and so processing time for paper applications of form 64-8 and self-assessment registrations will also be affected.

This will not affect Internet authorisations but HMRC warns that further delays may incur if tax agents submit the 64-8 form online after previously submitting it on paper.

One personal tax adviser commented that a delay of 8 weeks for registering newly self employed freelancers sounds as if HMRC wants to put people off paying tax altogether!

Meanwhile, HMRC is likely to suffer more job losses when the results of the Comprehensive Spending Review are released in October. The Association of Revenue and Customs however points out that this is not necessarily a sensible move as HMRC does generate revenue for the government.

The president of the ARC, Graham Black, said it was ridiculous to cut more jobs at HMRC. He suggests increasing staffing levels to bring in more tax and catch tax evaders and he will outline his case to MPs on September 8th at Westminster.

Since 2006-07, the amount of money collected by HMRC has dropped by £25bn and the amount spent on dealing with the tax gap has almost halved from £3.6bn to £1.9bn. Every pound the government spends on dealing with tax evasion will reap 30 times that amount, or even more. Any logical person would jump at such an investment opportunity, Black remarked.

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